Light Catcher | Tatton 2015
Sharon is a multi-RHS award winning garden designer who is recognised as the gardener's choice for garden design. With a life-long love of horticulture coupled with an academic and creative background in English Literature and a career in Graphic Design, Sharon encapsulates an unusual combination of real gardening and plant knowledge with strong design.
Her gardens bring together functionality and dreams; practical landscaping is offset with an emphasis on the softer, ever changing beauty of plants. Her schemes have been described as 'dreamy' and her approach tunes in to a garden's existing character and context, with longevity and sustainability very much at the heart of her work.
Sharon's design philosophy has been guided by her hands-on experience of maintaining and developing gardens. Designing a space is ultimately influenced by the client’s needs and desires, with simple practicalities at the forefront followed by layers of detail in materials, features, structures and the planting. Plant choice and combinations appropriate to place is key balanced with an appreciation of the importance of seasonal change through plant type, form, structure, foliage and light.
One of Sharon’s passions is to make gardens more resourceful by creating habitats that will enrich wildlife, by making gardens more productive and by working with and showing an appreciation of the natural.
“As a gardener and designer, weaving wildlife into gardens by what we choose to plant and how we decide to manage our landscapes gives us a wonderful opportunity to become custodians of nature.
Strong design is always central but it is the layers of planting that will bring a space to life, nourish wildlife and help calm busy lives. ”
Sharon exhibited her first contemporary fruit-themed show garden at the RHS Flower Show, Tatton Park, Cheshire in 2009 called 'Be fruitful' which was awarded a Silver-Gilt medal. It was also through this garden that Sharon attracted the attention of the late well-known Italian cook Antonio Carluccio, who's garden she designed and created into an urban fruit garden.
“I was looking for inspiration for a new garden in my new house in Putney... and there was Sharon Hockenhull on BBC Breakfast presenting a fantastic idea of planting fruit trees and bushes alongside beautiful flowers. Not only a visual and aromatic garden but one full of flavour too. Now I have fourteen different varieties of fruit which already in the first year, I enjoyed enormously. That’s what I call gardening.”
Based in the North West, Sharon mainly works on local projects but will consider commissions nationwide.
